The second night begins before the sun has even set.
I am summoned to her private solar while the last council of the day still lingers in the corridors outside. The lords are drinking honeyed wine and arguing over the cost of siege towers. I slip away with the excuse of fetching a ledger. No one questions the queen's shadow.
She is waiting behind the locked door, dressed only in a sleeveless linen shift the color of fresh cream. The fabric is so fine I can see the dark circles of her nipples, the shadow between her thighs. Her hair is loose, still damp from her bath. She smells of crushed roses and heat.
"Close the door," she says.
I obey. The click of the latch sounds like a vow.
She does not speak again. She simply walks to the wide cushioned chaise beneath the arched window, lies back, and spreads her legs.
The shift rides up to her hips. She is bare beneath it.
My mouth goes dry.
"Tonight," she says, voice low and steady, "you do not come until I have three times. And you do not use your cock until the third. Understood?"
I nod, already sinking to my knees between her thighs.
She cups my cheek, thumb brushing my lower lip. "Use your words, Lucian."
"Yes, Mother," I rasp.
Her smile is slow, approving. "Good boy."
The first orgasm takes seven minutes.
I start gentle—long, slow licks from her entrance to her clit, savoring the way she tastes faintly of the bath oils and entirely of sin. When her hips begin to chase my tongue I ease back, keeping her teetering on the edge until she snarls and yanks my hair hard enough to sting.
"Stop teasing."
I slide two fingers into her instead, curling them exactly where she taught me last night, and suck her clit in steady pulses. She comes with a sharp cry, thighs clamping around my ears, inner muscles fluttering around my fingers.
I do not stop.
I keep licking softly through the aftershocks, then build her again—three fingers this time, stretching her, stroking that spot relentlessly while my tongue flicks fast and light. She lasts four minutes before she shatters a second time, back arching off the chaise, a low continuous moan spilling from her throat.
I am shaking with the need to be inside her. My cock throbs against the confines of my breeches, leaking steadily.
She looks down at me, eyes glazed, chest heaving.
"Take them off," she orders, voice wrecked. "Slowly."
I stand on trembling legs and strip. Every layer feels like shedding skin I no longer need. When I am naked she crooks a finger.
"Come here."
I crawl over her. She guides my cock to her entrance—hot, slick, open—and stops me with a hand on my chest.
"Inside, but do not move until I say."
I push in one slow inch. Two. She is scorching, velvet tight, still pulsing faintly from her last climax. I grit my teeth so hard I taste blood.
Another inch. Another. Until I am seated to the hilt and trembling with the effort of staying still.
She wraps her legs around my waist, heels digging into my back, and cups my face in both hands.
"Look at me."
I do.
Green eyes, fierce and tender and utterly possessive.
"You are mine," she whispers. "Every heartbeat. Every breath. Every drop of come in these balls—" she reaches between us to cup me gently—"belongs to your queen. Say it."
"I am yours," I choke out. "Always."
She smiles like a woman who has just won a war.
Then she rolls her hips.
The first thrust is hers. The second. The third. She sets a slow, grinding rhythm that drags the head of my cock across that spot inside her on every stroke. I am sweating, shaking, fists clenched in the cushions beside her head.
"Please," I finally beg, voice broken.
"Please what?"
"Please let me fuck you."
She laughs, low and delighted, and tightens around me deliberately.
"Move, darling. Give me my third."
I lose control.
I drive into her hard, fast, relentless—years of pent-up worship pouring out in every thrust. The chaise creaks beneath us. Her breasts bounce with each slam of my hips. She claws at my back, urging me deeper, harder, faster.
"Yes—gods—Lucian—fill me—"
I feel her tighten, flutter, break around me a third time—her loudest yet, my name a sob—and I follow her over instantly, coming with a hoarse shout, pulsing deep inside her again and again until I am empty and wrecked.
We stay locked together, panting, her legs still wrapped around me, my face buried in her neck.
After a long moment she strokes my hair.
"Eleven minutes total," she murmurs against my temple. "Better than thirty-one seconds last night. We will make it an hour by the end of the month."
I laugh—shaky, dazed—and kiss the sweat-damp skin below her ear.
"As many months as you require, Mother. I am a very dedicated student."
She hums, pleased, and clenches deliberately around my softening cock.
"Excellent. Then your next lesson begins now."
She rolls us so I am on my back and she is astride me, shift rucked up around her waist, my spend already leaking from her onto my stomach.
"Tonight," she says, beginning to rock in slow, filthy circles, "you are going to learn how to stay hard after you come."
She rides me three more times before the moon sets.
By the time she finally allows me to sleep—curled behind her, still inside her, her back to my front—I have lost count of her orgasms and all memory of a world that exists beyond her body.
Outside, the war council will reconvene at dawn.
Inside these walls, the only strategy that matters is how quickly I can make my queen scream my name again.
I fall asleep smiling, already planning tomorrow's lesson.